i don't think a consumer should have to make it. i know on my train ride here to boston, i was on my verizon lte ipad, i had a ten gigabyte plan and i wasn't sure where i stood, and i was going to watch a movie, and i didn't know -- i found myself in this gray area where it was potentially going to cost me more money to watch it. that's always a red flag to me. if i'm feeling it, then other people are feeling it. and then that could retard adoption and consumption. so i think at the end of the day, people should -- i'm not disputing people should pay more for access, or if you're going to access more, you should pay more. i'm happy to pay more. i never want to have that cut off. or i never want to feel like i shouldn't watch a movie because i may or may not be near my cap. >> sounds like you needed a friendly reminder. >> yes. >> are news services like

houdini, i would expect them to drive so much more video consumption. do you think they're actually going to be driving technology and pushing us toward sort of the new 4-g landscape where everybody is consuming at a higher -- i know this is something we've talked about, consuming at a more high-tech level? >> well, from our perspective, you know, we compare the rollout of our lte network, our 4-g network to our 3-g network. and our data consumption on our lt network, which has only been commercial for 18 months, is much deeper than our 3-g network was after three or four years. and it's all driven by the quality of the devices on our network, and then the consumer desire. and all of the different options that consumers have to consume, you know, sports and news, certainly business. and movies and entertainment.

so i expect we're going to see continued growth. that's why we're so focused on -- as an industry on the importance of the spectrum in our industry. and we think it will -- you know, it's the cornerstone of meeting consumer demand. >> i want to say one thing. i'm constantly in awe of how fast my lte network is, and how deep the coverage is. i don't want to say that in any particular way. if you would have asked me ten years ago would i be able to have broadband speeds faster than what i get in my residential home at that time, you know, on the go, i would have said that's out of a science fiction movie. that a radio network could be that fast. so i'm constantly running speed tests and sharing that with friends and telling people how fast it is. it's really amazing that that's -- i think we sometimes take for granted, you know, that we have this ubiquitous wireless network that operates at

incredible speeds. you know, that it's available today. we blink like it's no big deal. and it's like -- for me, it's like we're living in the future. >> just yesterday comcast announced they'll give viewer subscribers to each other's wi-fi hot spots. that's 50,000 -- access to 50,000 hot spots around the country. >> it's a partnership among the various cable providers to have a common standard, so that one could in effect roam from one area to another. so if you're a comcast subscriber in phillie and go to new york, you could access the time warner cable television wi-fi networks. i think dan and i have been speaking about this, and i think it's very complementary. they work together, both in the home, and dan's great network out of the home. and i think they're symbiotic and complementary. i think it's a great combination for the consumer at the end of the day to have access to both

wi-fi and lte network. >> and consume more of your movies or video. i have to ask on the heels of the facebook ipo on friday, i'm curious how you see facebook and social media impacting digital distribution, whether it's impacting the way people search and find, or recommend and share. do you see an impact from social media? >> again, you know, where i'm operating on these indie films, it's a complete game-changer. from a marketing perspective, the kind of word of mouth you can generate and then spread, whether it's facebook, and also twitter, has really change the the conversation for us. as far as people accessing content via facebook, it will be curious to see where we go the next five years with that. >> for us, it's been a tremendous, big powerful evolution in the history of music. music has always been social.

you've always listened to music with friends, gone to see music together, told your friends about music. it's really the best form of marketing on the planet, when music is good and moves you. so it's a natural evolution of that. for us, we move to an all-facebook registration. we've seen only 60 days ago, you know, 1,600% increase in the amount of music shared and music consumed. so for us, it's been the right decision. and we work closely with them. >> yeah, we do as well. i look at the importance of social media being, how fast it's helping to change the industry. so consumers are the thought leaders now. it's not one or two individuals. facebook and the other social media is really enabling that. i think it's going to help drive the speed of innovation. i also think it's going to help drive competition, which is

very, very good for our industries. we want to see extremely aggressive competition. and if we have that innovation will occur, and consumers always win in a highly competitive world. >> i think we see it as an interesting way of sharing the content with friends. we've launched the x-1 platform here in boston in a couple of weeks. and because it's cloud enabled and lets us integrate apps like facebook or platforms, you know, any sharing platforms easily into the experience, and i think it's a matter of customizing them for the viewing experience. i'm not sure consumers want to put up a browser on their screen. i think they want to have it integrated. so we integrate rotten tomatoes to help rate the shows, for example. we can do that in a matter of a week or two what used to take months. we're able to move at a much

faster pace. >> the question is, whether your customers will feel comfortable having everything they watch on television be shared with all of their friends on facebook automatically. will comcast television be integrated into the social graph. right now, when i read a story on yahoo! news, it publishes automatically. when i watch a movie on tivo, it publishes automatically. and so i know that that's been an issue of debate. and there are even some -- i think some legislation and laws about it as well. >> yeah. >> that would be an interesting evolution. it's not about sharing a show, it's about will my television service share automatically on my behalf to my friends if i allow it to. >> that's a good question. i'm not sure customers would want it, or what their regulatory implications would be. but at the end of the day, i kind of go with the consumer

demand will pull the technology and the industry where it wants to go. but i'm not sure how that will play out. what do you think, ed? >> i think it's -- consumers are driving all of this. i mean, the technology certainly leads them in some cases, but it always seems to be about the kids. and they kind of dictate to us a lot of the time. >> there's certainly some cool technology that addresses these consumer demands. unfortunately we have to wrap it up here. but i want to thank our panelists for joining us. very, very interesting conversation. thank you all. >> thank you. warren buffett talks to the economic club of washington tonight. and we'll have live coverage. he's going to discuss economic issues of the day with carlisle group co-founder david ruben stein. it begins at 8:50 eastern. this is primary day in six states. including california and new

jersey, for several congressional primaries. wisconsin voters are going to the polls to decide whether to replace governor walker with tom barrett. c-span2 will have the wisconsin results live, starting at 9:00 eastern. this is c-span-3. every weekend, 48 hours of people on events telling the american story, on american history tv. get our schedules and see past programs at our websites. and you can join in the conversation on social media sites. a conversation now with federal communications commission chair julius genachowski. he spoke at the national cable and telecom association annual convention. he was interviewed by the group's president and ceo, michael powell. this is about 20 minutes.

>> mr. chairman, good morning. great to see you. >> good to see you. >> let's start easy. the dynamics of the commissioner is always interesting. and less than a week ago, you finally got your full complement of commissioners, both of whom has blessed us by coming up to the cable show in the first week. what does that mean for you? is that exciting? new difficulties? >> it makes it harder to get conference rooms. but no, it's great. look, i've been very lucky. we've had a very well functioning commission that's got a lot done. we've got a lot done unanimously in a bipartisan basis where we disagreed, we've been able to disagree without being disagreeable. and now we have two experienced, accomplished, smart, new commissioners. i couldn't be more excited. >> did you know them before? >> i did. i did.

i think ajid briefly worked for me. when i became chairman of the fcc, ajit was still in the general council's office. >> i think jessica worked for me at one point. it's great to have you. you know, if you could tell, you've been here for a little while. the cable industry is very focused on innovation. even though it's sort of an overused word, we believe we're struggling hard to be on the cusp of the next explosion, creative in our products and services. and i just wondered whether that's some of the things that have interested you most about what you see in the innovation around video? >> absolutely. i don't think innovation is an overused word. i'm excited about the innovation that we're seeing across the broadband economy. if i could start at a higher level. across the board, we're seeing tremendous innovation, and

investment in networks, wired and wireless, in apps, in a number of important areas. america is back. we've regained world leadership. on the wired side, you know, here's something that i think most people don't really appreciate. three years ago, cable broadband networks had -- we were only 12% were capable of providing speeds of more than 10 or 20 meg a bits. today with the rollout of docksis 3.0, over 80% of cable subscribers are in systems that are capable of 100 megabits or more. we set a goal for 2020 of affordable 100 megabits to 100 million homes in the u.s. with the rollout of docksis 3.0, we're well on our way to hitting that goal. >> that's terrific. we've been bragging that, you know, what a difference a day

makes that the cable increased speeds of 900% in a decade. and that's really extraordinary. i know when you took over as the chairman, it was really critical to you to try to advance the position of the united states, to improve the pace of that broadband. would you say you're relatively satisfied? i know we always have more to do, but do you feel that both under your leadership and the country and the industry, you're really achieving what you had set out to do? >> yes, we're moving in the right direction. in some areas, mobile as an example, we've regained global leadership in broadband. mobile innovation in the u.s. is the envy of the world. we're going to be the first country in the world to roll out 4-g, and we're making tremendous progress in terms of speed. our apps economy is just incredible. on all platforms. working together, we're starting to make progress on the adoption issue, the broadband adoption issue. so it's interesting.

sometimes i like the fact that we challenge ourselves as a country. it's good. it's what motivates us. it's also true that when i go and meet my counterparts from around the world, they're increasingly envious of what they see in the u.s. around broadband and innovation. it's not the time to let our feet off the gas. we've got to keep moving forward. and we have a lot of very significant challenges to face. some of the challenges are the kind of challenges we want to have. they come from our success. they come from increased demand, increased consumer consumption, increased consumer demand for wireless and wired. that's the kind of problem we want to have as a country and we need to work about getting over those challenges. >> there's an esoteric dispute over whether wireless is a real broadband device to the internet. but you seem to be sort of a

passionate spokesman for the view that it is. it has real value for consumers in that regard. can you say a little bit about that, complement, competitor, reality? >> all of the above. and we don't know yet exactly what role mobile broadband will play in the ecosystem, because we don't know yet the speeds are that people will want for different services. and that's fine. you know, some of the most exciting things that will happen in the next few years are things that we don't know about and can't predict. one of the things about wireless that's very exciting, and the cable industry has been a leader, has been wi-fi. it's an unlicensed spectrum that was put on the market precisely to lead to innovations that no one would expect. it's given us wi-fi, which is now playing a very important role in consumers' lives, a very important role in offload off of our mobile infrastructure. cable has been leading the way in innovating around wi-fi.

i was very pleased to see the announcement yesterday, a number of different cable companies have said essentially, we're going to enable our consumers to do wi-fi roaming. and if you're a customer of any one of our companies for wi-fi, you can go anywhere and use it. i think that's great. and i think we're just at the beginning of the innovation that we'll see from wi-fi, from unlicensed, from wireless, as you know, we've been working to put on the market more unlicensed spectrum that has even more exciting characteristics than the wi-fi that's on the market now. >> yeah, we appreciated the chance to work with you during the spectrum bill, which you were a big champion of. and congratulations on ultimately securing passage of, in order to deal with the spectrum crisis. the industry fought hard, i think, with you for the view that unlicensed is going to play a critical role in the ecosystem. and one of the great advantages is innovation without

permission. it allows companies and people like apple to design a device and know it will be able to have some access. one thing you said, i'm curious your thoughts about, because you're much more a wireless expert than i am about o offloading. we've heard a lot about the wireless market being congested, and the importance of getting those things off towers and into the ground. do you think that's an important role in helping bring down that traffic in order to ease congestion? >> absolutely. it's a big part of the solution. you know, in the category of the kind of problems that you want to have, is mobile congestion. it would be great in some respects if we had no mobile congestion. but then we wouldn't have any demand. and we wouldn't have the exciting apps and services. we have a spectrum crunch because incredible people in this country have innovated exciting apps, people are using them, and they're hungry to use

them anywhere, anytime, anywhere. that's great. but we have a limited resource in spectrum. you have a lot of experience in this. no one anticipated this increase. so we haven't managed spectrum policy to anticipate this kind of increase. but we have to do that now. we have to do things like look harder and more carefully at government spectrum. about 60% of spectrum has government as a primary user. we have to think about making much more of that available for commercial more quickly, and think about the innovative ideas like sharing of government use and commercial use, building on some of the technologies and ideas in wi-fi. which is largely a sharing technology. it's a little bit geeky, but i'll say one thing, this is an enormous opportunity, a new opportunity for the u.s. to lead the world in an innovation of a new category that will rule for many years.

it's important that the u.s. lead in this. >> i think that's a good point. i sort of share the optimism about the -- and a little bullishness about our employment story. it reaches 93% of the american households today. in a minute we'll talk about the remaining percentage, how important it is to reach them. but we have this gap. we have this fantastic service, and all of us who are big techno files, or techno euphoric about the broadband, we still have really roughly two-thirds of american consumers on the net, and a third that are not there. let's talk about adoption. i think this is something the industry recognizes, proud to be a part of. and you've really challenged us, and the country to solve that problem. tell us what you think about that, and the best ways to do that are. >> a big challenge. so about a third of people in the united states don't have broadband access, don't have broadband at home. they don't subscribe. 67%, roughly, adoption rate for broadband. if you believe, as i do, and i

know you do, that this is an essential platform for people to participate in our economy, participate in our democracy, get access to education, health care, 67% isn't anywhere near good enough. how to bring that up is a very difficult challenge. there's no silver bullet. but we've seen some very important steps forward in the last year. so connect to compete, internet essentials, the earlier comcast initiative, cox started this several years ago, and really tested these concepts out. the idea of broadband providers, cable broadband providers offering low-cost broadband to low-income people, in the case of connect and compete in essentials, people -- families with kids on school lunch programs, $9.95 a month, this is

a big deal. and it can move the needle on broadband adoption. i'm very pleased that this is happening. i commend the cable industry for accepting up, to responding to the challenge. and for now, working through the many very difficult operational challenges to roll this out in the market. but i think in the next year or two, we'll see just very exciting results from this. and we're seeing other parts of the ecosystem contribute as well. the ad council is announcing today that it is going to make digital literacy and broadband adoption a priority campaign, in january, with the help of cable programmers, and operators and broadcasters and others. it's going to roll out a national multi-lingual campaign to help drive broadband adoption, and digital literacy. >> that's an interesting question, because one of the things that i thought was unique and your findings about the

adoption gap, and one of the things i think our companies would say, that they've discovered is, well, even though affordability is a component of the adoption story, it isn't the only one, and it may not be the only significant one. you found that as well with respect to literacy. flush that out for us a little bit. what's going on with the american consumer on that front? >> there are too many americans who lack basic digital skills. there was a study that came out yesterday that reported that half of american businesses are having trouble finding people to fill available jobs, because they can't find people with suitable skills. and often that's basic digital skills. about 66% of americans don't have basic digital skills. they don't know how to upload documents, upload a resume. you can't look for a job if

you're not online. so this is a -- it's a major issue. and if we don't tackle this, we'll fall behind as a country. and it's an important part of the campaign that you've been leading. >> we appreciate your leadership on it. i think this is something that cable industry has really committed itself fully to. we think that it's great for our industry. and our own self-interest. but more importantly, we think it's essential to the country. and i think we expect to be proud of what we've done, and in partnership with you. i want to thank you for everything you've done on that. segway a little bit to other dynamics in the market. you know, there are a lot of elements to innovation. there are a lot of elements to changing marketplaces. and as we both experienced, particularly in the broadband internet space, the speed of change is sort of breathtaking. and you have to constantly be

reevaluating what you're doing in services. one area i wanted to touch on with you, without some controversy, is pricing flexibility. right now, in the internet ecosystem, all kinds of companies are experimenting with new pricing. and it's not really actually exclusive to cable. satellite companies are doing it, the wireless companies are certainly experimenting with consumption based pricing. you've spoken about this, understandably, in the past. and i wonder what your thoughts are today about that. because i think it's something our companies are wrestling with getting right, that works for them, that allows them to fund the investment necessarily to keep this network innovating and growing, but is consistent with the law as well. >> well, business model innovation is -- it's very important, particularly in new areas like broadband. there was a point of view that

said a couple of years ago that really is only one permissible pricing model for broadband. i didn't agree with that, and the commission didn't agree with that. and we said that business model experimentation, usage based pricing could be a healthy and beneficial part of the ecosystem. it could help drive efficiency in networks, increase consumer choice and competition, and increase fairness, right? because it can, we said, result in lower prices for people who consume less broadband. so experimentation in this area, with those goals in mind, is something that's completely appropriate. >> yeah. that's terrific. you know, another area that you probably cannot walk through this hall and have somebody not ask you about is the continuing strains and kind of the programming distribution marketplace, and particularly retrans. a market where the government

plays a role. right or wrong, they can influence that dynamic. for all of you out there, i take no current position on this issue. but i wanted to -- i wanted to ask you a little bit about it. i'm sure you've heard a little bit about it. how do you see this issue in your role? and do you see anything out there that concerns you? >> well, the -- there are a difficult set of issues here, as you mentioned. you know, first, creators of programming have the right to charge for carriage of their programming. it's true for cable programmers, it's true for broadcasters. the framework that covers this, the statutory framework that was put in place 20 years ago was relatively rigid. there are questions about whether that framework is addressing the issues -- some of the issues that are coming up now as more and more retrans

agreements are being put in place, particularly broadcasters moving to charge compensation for their programming. again, which is perfectly permissible. but we've seen blackouts and we've certainly heard from consumers, concerns that they have about the effects on them. that's why we opened a proceeding on this several months ago. one of the things that's come up in the proceeding that is an issue that's getting closer attention at the fcc is something that's called shared services agreements. and so there are some broadcasters who, in addition, for example, to negotiating for two stations together in connection with a per messible du op pli, have shared with a third station, so now it's three stations negotiating together for retrans. that raises real issues, and something we're taking a close look at the fcc. >> we appreciate that. i think as the conversation morphs into 2013 around perhaps

a new telecom law, a new basis for regulation in the industry, which given the last one in 1996, it's beginning to gray, we hope there may be a way to find some accommodations to all of these issues in that process. one last question i wanted to ask you about. because something i'm actually quite proud of you for, because as chairman of the fcc, i tried it. every chairman i know has tried it, and failed. and that's to reform the universal system. while there's efforts to try to undermine what you do, i wanted to publicly both commend you for it, and i think you've struck a very positive balance, and give you the last word, of what i think is one of your most crowning achievements. >> the first thing i must say is it's an achievement of the entire commission, because it wouldn't have happened if all the commissioners together in a bipartisan basis didn't support the goals that we laid out for universal service. for people who don't follow the ins and outs of this, fundamentally what we did, and what others had sought to do,

was transform a universal service system that was focused on telephone service. to one that's focused on broadband. moving from the 20th century named communications platform to the 21st century named communications platform, and do it in a way that recognizes the fiscal constraints that we're all under in a government, and that recognizes it, like other programs, this one had gotten a little creeky over the years, inefficient, wasteful, and certainly not driving our national broadband objectives. so we were able to put these reforms in place, eliminate things that really didn't make sense. for example, with cable providing broadband, we saw there were many parts of the country where this program was spending consumer money to subsidize a company -- a telephone company to